Chronic Kidney Disease and the Older Patient – a Fatal Combination?

If you are an older person with chronic kidney disease, you are at a significantly higher risk of having your disease progress to kidney failure and death.

Kidney disease is often silent and occurs when the nephrons, which are the tiny blood filtering units of the kidney, become damaged. Damage to the nephrons causes a build-up of toxic waste and fluids within the body. Chronic kidney disease may be defined as the loss of one-third of kidney function for more than three months.

What Are the Symptoms of Kidney Disease?

It is important to note that individuals may lose up to 90 per cent of their kidney function before developing symptoms. Symptoms of kidney disease may include:

Hypertension

Changes in frequency of urination

Haematuria (blood in the urine)

Oedema (swelling of the feet, ankles and legs)

Back pain

Headache

Fatigue

Loss of appetite

Nausea and vomiting

Pruritis (itching)

Sleep disturbance

Shortness of breath

Haemodialysis is a method that is used to achieve the extracorporeal removal of waste products such as creatinine and urea and free water from the blood when the kidneys are in a state of renal failure.

Who is at Risk of Developing Kidney Disease?

Individuals:

Over the age of 60

With diabetes

With a family history of chronic kidney disease

With a history of heart attack or stroke

Who have hypertension

Who are obese

Who smoke

Who are of Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander origin

How is Kidney Disease Diagnosed?

Excess protein in the urine is a marker of kidney damage. Patients who are at high risk of renal disease should have an ACR (albumin-creatinine ratio) urine test, which presents an accurate picture of the amount of protein in the urine. Albumin in the urine is sometimes the first sign of kidney disease.

The glomerular filtration rate (GFR) is a measure of how efficiently the kidneys filter waste products from the bloodstream. The GFR is the most accurate assessment of kidney function. Because GFR is difficult to measure accurately, the glomerular filtration rate is estimated (eGFR) using serum creatinine prediction equations that take into account the patient’s age, gender and creatinine level.

Related Research Study

Current thinking regarding older adults and kidney disease suggests that older patients are more likely to die of old age than succumb to kidney failure. Canadian researcher, Dr Brenda Hemmelgarn and her team, set out to determine the relationship between age, and untreated versus treated kidney failure.

Hemmelgarn and her colleagues assessed more than 1.8 million adults who had a baseline estimated glomerular filtration (eGFR) rate of 15mL/min/1.73m2 or greater. The researchers obtained the measures of glomerular filtration rate over a 6-year period between 2002 and 2008. At the beginning of this study none of the subjects required dialysis.

The results showed a rise in mortality rates as the age of the subjects rose, and that the youngest age group had the highest rate of treated kidney failure.

Results of Study

The study revealed that 97,451 subjects had passed away during the follow-up midpoint average of four years, with 3,295 subjects developing treated kidney failure, and 3,116 subjects developing untreated kidney failure.

The adjusted rates of untreated kidney failure for patients in the lowest glomerular filtration rate stratum were more than five times higher among the very old (those subjects aged 85 years and older), compared with the youngest age group (18 to 44 years). Untreated kidney failure was more common in older participants.

The results of this study suggest that there is a need to recognise and assess chronic kidney disease progression in older adults. Healthcare practitioners should offer dialysis to older patients when they are likely to benefit from it.

Conservative treatment should be offered to patients who are unlikely to benefit from long-term dialysis, or who would prefer not to receive dialysis. Their results also show the need to more accurately identify older patients with chronic kidney disease, as well as to assess their symptoms and develop appropriate treatment strategies.

Lastly, a better understanding of the decision-making process regarding dialysis and older adults is required.

Our population is ageing and, as the aged population grows, we need to develop strategies to better cope with health conditions affecting older adults, including chronic kidney disease.